Volume 49, Number 11 · June 27, 2002
Bitter-Sweet
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Private Lives
a play by Noël Coward, directed by Howard Davies
at the Richard Rodgers Theater, New York, opened April 28, 2002
Long Island Sound
a play by Noël Coward, directed by Scott Alan Evans
at the Actors Company Theater, New York, opened May 13, 2002
'A talent to amuse'or 'just a talent to amuse'? Even before Noël Coward's death in 1973, the former had become the standard celebratory summation of his contribution to popular culture during a half-century as a playwright, actor, songwriter, diarist, composer, autobiographer, novelist, and cabaret entertainer. A Talent to Amuse is the title of Sheridan Morley's admiring but judicious 1969 biography of Sir Noël; A TALENT TO AMUSE is the epigraph that adorns the Westminster Abbey memorial stone dedicated to him (and located—appropriately, you can't help thinking, for this master of light verse—not in, but just adjacent to, the Poet's Corner).
Review, 3851 words
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